Student Gaza Protests Can Be Schools for Communism

Students at Delhi, India Encampment Interested in ICWP here ♦ Students Mobilizing Against Genocide in LA, USA Welcome Communist Ideas here ♦

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Students at Encampment in Delhi, India Interested in ICWP

DELHI (India), May 7— Students at   Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have set up an encampment to protest the Israeli rulers’ genocidal massacres in Gaza.  Three comrades of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) went to the encampment to support millions of workers and students around the world.

“I joined ICWP and became a communist six years ago as a JNU student when fascist Modi supporters went on a rampage,” one said. “We were brutally attacked by the fascist mob. I was a leftist student but when I saw the police attacking Muslim residential areas and bulldozing thousands, I was convinced this capitalist system has to go.

The students described their visit:

We met several JNU students. They were young, angry, and looking for leadership.

We immediately started distributing Red Flag Gaza pamphlets. The students were organized by a revisionist (fake-communist) party. Many students read our pamphlet from the beginning to the end. It is hard to imagine their reaction when we said, “Comrades, we need you to join us. Comrade Hamza is calling on all of us, from the most brutal conditions.”  Many students were visibly emotional and spent several hours with us.

We were at the encampment to struggle and recruit honest students to ICWP. We had no intention of engaging with the revisionist organizers.

Many students said that if we can pressure the Israeli government to stop arming, it would stop the killing of innocent civilians. They thought that the US was behind the Israeli support and that Palestine would be free if millions were liberated from US imperialism.

This is when one student took the ICWP pamphlet and pointed out the two articles from Bengaluru and Shaheen Bagh. He said, “Nationalism is another word for fascism. There is no such thing as good nationalism.  Garment workers in Bengaluru understand that. We have to learn from them. I will seriously consider joining ICWP.”

We realized, “From Columbia to JNU the students are crying for a new direction. That new direction cannot be anything but communism.” We signed up many of these eager students to join our ICWP forces on May Day.  They eagerly took several Red Flags and pamphlets.

We will never stop organizing the masses for communism! The humiliation and atrocities faced by the population in Gaza for over 75 years are turning the whole world upside down. As comrade Hamza said, “Communism is the future.” We are prepared to do everything to make it happen. 

NEW DELHI (India), April 29— Over 100 students at Jawaharlal Nehru University rallied to protest a talk by US Ambassador Eric Garcetti. University officials had to cancel it. Students called out US complicity in the genocide the Israeli government is committing in Gaza. Over 40,000 Palestinians are dead and almost all the living face starvation.

Los Angeles, USA: Students Mobilizing Against Genocide Welcome Communist Ideas

LOS ANGELES (USA), May 4— Growing anger at the US-supported Israeli bombardment and starvation of the Gaza masses has exploded into a qualitatively new level of struggle. Students across the US and around the world have organized protest encampments. They have maintained their camps in the face of vicious attacks by uniformed and non-uniformed fascists.

“Look!” a comrade said to H, a new friend, together at a campus protest. “They are organizing food, security, education, health care. No money involved – just cooperating and sharing. It’s showing, in a small way, how communism can work.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” H replied.

This lesson has not been lost on the students. “Do you think others here would be interested in communism, too?” B asked O, an encampment leader who had just happily taken Red Flag and our Palestine pamphlet.

“I think everyone here is interested in communism,” she answered.

At other colleges we find the same thing. Students take and read our communist literature and put extra copies on their library table. Noting the communist aspects of their camp, one said. “I could live like this always.”

That scares college administrators and politicians far more than tents or divestment demands. hat’s why they whine about “outside agitators.”  It’s why many call in cops to break up the camps, often brutally. And why others (like Brown and Northwestern) agree to consider some students’ demands.

The specter of communism is again haunting capitalists in Europe, the USA, and worldwide.

“They Tried to Bury Us – They Didn’t Know We Are Seeds”

University of Southern California administrators called in LA cops to rough up and arrest over ninety students and allies on the first night of their encampment. The next afternoon, the students returned with a “die-in” and stayed throughout that night. “Our camp has lived to see another day!” O rejoiced.

The UCLA administration didn’t call the cops as quickly. But around midnight on April 30, a masked Zionist paramilitary group assaulted the pro-Palestine tent camp with clubs, tossing firecrackers at the students. The students fought back, successfully defending their barricades – while campus cops hid. Finally, a California Highway Patrol detachment showed up – then watched for over an hour while the fascist attack continued.

Many were shocked: “The police didn’t do anything!”  A comrade replied, “If they’d done anything it would have been to attack the students. We can’t rely on police to protect us.”

Thousands of supporters surrounded the camp the next day. Sure enough, the cops showed up in force that night and “cleared the camp” with mass arrests.

Some friends believe (as older communist movements did, and as some of us once did) that demands are necessary to “expose” college administrators. Some even think it’s necessary to win demands to keep the movement alive. We continue to discuss this and will write more about it.

The real-life lessons of the “stop Gaza genocide” camps have a far greater impact than liberal boycott and divestment demands.

What Students Are Learning in Struggle

Capitalism is in essence fascist. The iron fist hides in a threadbare velvet glove. The attacks on the Gaza masses, then on anti-war dissidents in Israel, have come home.

Universities are not ivory towers. A college education doesn’t guarantee a decent job – in the US or India or anywhere. But it is guaranteed to promote illusions that we can improve capitalism by working within the system. To promote elitist and racist lies that serve imperialism. Some students at Emory University, where cops viciously attacked anti-racist protesters, singling out students of color most sharply, now say they don’t even want their degrees.

Most important is that lesson about communism. Students and workers can organize ourselves to work collectively, without buying, selling, or bartering. We can meet our needs and defend our interests. We can and must rely on one another. We build relationships of trust and political struggle.

But to make communism a permanent way of life will require armed revolution. We need to be there with the students to show them why that means communist mass organizing now, especially among the industrial workers and working-class soldiers who are key. Students alone can’t bring down the imperialist system that destroys the lives of masses in Palestine and around the world. That will take a mass International Communist Workers’ Party.

We are inviting our friends – old friends and new friends we are meeting in this struggle – to join ICWP. Their participation will strengthen our Party politically as well as in numbers. We, too

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